Avalanche Country
You don't want to wish harm on anybody but
Links are at the end, in the links sanitorium.
The photo is a year and a bit old, but it’s a fair representation of the current view from the lanai except it’s raining now. Snow-capped peaks, hyper-local version.
From Democrats, Buttigieg has faced questions on whether he has done enough to hold transportation companies accountable.
Why no, no he has not, nor his little dog too.12
“building something an F-22 blows out of the sky is a pretty amazing accomplishment”
Last Saturday, high above Canada’s Yukon territory, the pilot of a $150 million U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor, acting on orders from the leaders of both Canada and the U.S., fired a $472,000 AIM-9X Sidewinder missile at a small unidentified cylindrical object flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet, resulting in a confirmed air-to-air “kill.” What NORAD still hasn’t been able to confirm, almost a week later, is what exactly was blown out of the sky on February 11.
Since then, members of the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade, a club of high-altitude-balloon hobbyists, have been waiting to hear from K9YO-15, the group’s $100 silver mylar “pico” balloon.3
One positive outcome of the incident is that the balloon didn’t take out any of the F-35s that went up to peep it.
This is a 15-ounce balloon which, if it is indeed the Bottlecap Balloon Brigade’s craft, was on its seventh trip around our little blue marble.
The F-22 has never been seriously tested in aerial combat, but we now know for sure it can shoot the shit out of a balloon no matter how small and crafty.
Maybe.4
“We tortured some folks”
Obama’s down-home description of how the U.S. treated hundreds of foreign prisoners, probably more, was not the worst thing he ever said, but it’s up there, especially in light of how he compounded the crime by piling additional crimes atop it. No one was held accountable, torture contractors made mint, and the administration stonewalled everybody who tried to get redress through the U.S. courts.
He also never took on the routine torture that U.S. penal institutions inflict on our own.
A mentally ill man froze to death at an Alabama jail, according to a lawsuit filed by the man’s family who say he was kept naked in a concrete cell and believe he was also placed in a freezer or other frigid environment.
Anthony Don Mitchell, 33, arrived at a hospital emergency room with a body temperature of 72 degrees (22 degrees Celsius), and was pronounced dead hours later, according to the lawsuit. He was brought to the hospital on Jan. 26 from the Walker County Jail, where he’d been incarcerated for two weeks.
When the Alabama prison can’t freeze somebody to death, they’ll go ahead and cook them.
The allegations of death by hypothermia come as the state prison system also faces a lawsuit over the death of a mentally ill man who “baked to death” in an overheated prison cell. Thomas Lee Rutledge died of hyperthermia on Dec. 7, 2020, at William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility in Bessemer. Rutledge had an internal temperature of 109 degrees when he was found unresponsive in the mental health cell, according to the suit filed by his sister. It names prison staff, wardens and contractors as defendants.
Tasing people to death, beating people, freezing people, broiling people, withholding medication, prolonged solitary confinement and other common attacks on the physical and mental health of prisoners in this country are all torture or assaults on human dignity under the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, to which the US is a signatory.5
So it wasn’t an exceptional thing when the Bushies legalized torture and the Obamans called bygones on it. It’s a routine, accepted feature of our justice system and the society generally, and anybody who gets penalized for it is usually just one step above prisoners in social status and power, as with the few souls who went down for Abu Ghraib, and the “corrections” personnel who occasionally go down for what happens in prisons.
This is what I think about when people rail against “defund the police” and other anti-authoritarian manifestos. When you militarize the police, as we continue to do, you get cops treating citizens like enemy combatants, that peculiar classification which strips away all rights from populations and prisoners.
Defund the police, defund the CIA, defund the prisons, defund the Congress. Or just keep torturing some folks. Whatever. Must be practical.
Andy Ogles worked with George Santos to take down Lex Luthor
First term Tennessee representative Andy Ogles is, like George Santos, an international man of mystery.6
If you believe Middle Tennessee's newest congressman, he's not only a businessman, he's also an economist, a nationally recognized expert in tax policy and health care, a trained police officer, even an expert in international sex crimes.
But an exclusive NewsChannel 5 investigation discovered that Andy Ogles' personal life story is filled with exaggerations, a story that's often too good to be true.
None of the above, plus you have to wonder about people who aren’t but claim to be sex trafficking experts. What’s their interest?
How do people get away with this shit? Maybe the degree of difficulty will be higher henceforth.
Let it snow, let it
The annual snow festival in Sapporo opened a week or two ago after a three year hiatus. One of the more amazing sculptural efforts, among a bunch of them, is a reproduction of Florence Nightingale’s English home. This photo, along with all the others in the story, is ©Agnes Tandler.
Check it out.7
Musical artists with exclamation points
The Delgados, “The Great Eastern";”8 The Go! Team, “Get Up Sequences Part Two;”9 !!! (Chk Chk Chk), “Let It Be Blue.”10
That’s all there is, Comrades
Share it if you like it, and please consider subscribing if you’ve not already—it’s free unless you want to pay.
Take care, be well.
But. . . but. . . John Yoo is a constitutional scholar!